I have just had a quick look through an e-book which I originally downloaded some time ago. The book is "Admiralty Brief - The story of Inventions that Contributed to Victory in the Battle of the Atlantic" by Captain Edward Terrell RNVR. This is the story of a peacetime Barrister who became a Navy Officer involved in several experimental developments including: - Development of Plastic Armour Devices & Procedures to reduce smoke from merchant vessels Whilst working on countering U-Boat threats came up with the idea of attacking U-Boat pens from which came the idea for a rocket powered bomb which would have enough energy to penetrate the roof before exploding. This was unknown to me and I was particularly sceptical when I read that the bombs had to be underwing mounted and the only aircraft capable of carrying the weight was the B17 Flying Fortress and that American Aircraft were used to deliver the bomb. I then found a film clip on U-Tube here .The bomb was nicknamed "The Disney Swish" but there is no mention of British Involvement in the film. According to the book the following raids were carried out by 92nd Bombardment Group: - Feb 10 1945 - 9 aircraft attack U-Boat pens at Ijmuiden Holland Mar 14 1945 - 9 aircraft attack E-Boat pens at same location "End of March"- 35 aircraft attack U-Boat pens at Farge, Germany
The Department for Miscellaneous Weapons Development (DMWD) run by Terrell is a hugely important group of individuals, one which hardly gets its deserved credit. Most of the attention seems to focus on MD1. However, MD1 seems only to have been concentrating on things that go BANG. DMWD covered a huge range of subjects (my favourite was MTB camouflage. These are basically over sized umbrella's with camo on them. When the MTB ties up in a cove somewhere it sticks up its umbrella and instantly becomes camouflaged as a rock or some such). Here's some pictures of their other ideas: This is another DMWD idea. by spreading coal dust on the surface of a water feature it no longer looks like from the air. This would confuse German night time navigation. Here we see the Coventry Canal, some 4 hours after application. This scheme was also tried out on the Thames. They also invented one of, if not, the most important items of the entire war, plastic armour. But they also seem to have been heavily involved with rocketry, and the Disney bomb was just one of their many Rocket projects. Here's some pictures of their Tonsil rocket project, which was designed to combat V-1's.
